


Self-Reflection

by PKgiannycarlo



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Original Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 18:52:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25540117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PKgiannycarlo/pseuds/PKgiannycarlo
Summary: College student Gregory H. Williams finds an old forgotten tape recorder in his closet while he's home alone and listens to the tapes contained with it to see if he can learn anything from them. He ends up with more questions than answers after he revisits some traumatic memories and reexamines his youth as well as his current life in the strangest moment of self-reflection he's ever experienced.





	Self-Reflection

**Author's Note:**

> This story started out as a college assignment for my Creative Writing course about writing a horror story. The original version of this story received an A and some praise from my professor, so I decided to expand upon it slightly and put it out there for others to see. Any and all feedback and/or criticism is appreciated.

It all started with a tape recorder. A simple piece of old technology that Gregory hadn’t even seen anyone use in years. He had been organizing his closet after returning home from college when the device fell from a box in the upper shelf and nearly hit his head. Seeing it immediately made Gregory feel puzzled, as he had no memory of ever owning a tape recorder, let alone placing one inside his closet. He looked back toward his closet, the mirrors on the two sliding doors covered with an opaque cloth as they always were, and raised an eyebrow. He saw the box the recorder came out of, and it didn’t seem to have a lid.

“Well that’s rather strange,” Gregory thought out loud.

Gregory was alone in his home, and he would be for quite some time. His mother had accompanied his little sister on a school trip, and his father was on the other side of the country for a business trip. There was no one else in the house but Gregory. The tape recorder was still on the floor of his room, illuminated slightly by the light on the ceiling. There was already a tape inside of it. Gregory felt an uneasy feeling in his stomach as he bent down to pick the tape recorder up. As he took hold of it, he felt a shiver run up his spine and slight burn on the singular line of a scar that runs across his right hand. He had no idea why he felt the way he did, but he understood that his body was reacting as if something was terribly wrong about the act he had just committed. He stood up, and looked back at the closet. The opened box was still there, and Gregory felt compelled to take it out of the closet. Even though it was a warm spring afternoon, the box felt cold to the touch. Gregory looked inside, and the box contained a few unmarked tapes, presumably ones made with the recorder. He shut the closet door and made sure that the mirror cover was still firmly fastened before he walked to his bed, and sat down.

_I’ve got a bad feeling about this,_ he thought to himself, _but I’m going to listen to whatever is on this damned thing_.

Gregory placed his thumb over the black button at labeled “PLAY”, and slowly pushed it down until he heard it click into place. The tape began to play, and there were a few moments of silence that seemed to go on for hours before he heard anything. What he heard was the voice of a young boy.

“Hello? Is this thing on?” the voice asked. “My name is Gregory H. Williams, I’m 10 years old, and I’m using this new tape recorder my mom bought me to keep an audio journal.”

Gregory’s face went pale as the voice spoke his name. This recorder apparently belonged to him in the past, yet he had no memory of ever seeing it, let alone using it to record this message. The tape continued to play.

“I know this might sound strange, but this wasn’t my idea,” the young Gregory said.

There was a deep sigh before he continued to speak.

“I saw my special doctor a few days ago. He’s a nice man, but he always asks weird questions. He’s full of advice too. Most of it sounds pretty weird in the office before my mom explains it to me, but this time, he had an idea that I kinda liked. He’s the one who said I should get a recorder like this and talk about what’s on my mind so I don’t forget it,” young Gregory explained.

Gregory paused the tape. He felt a headache slowly creep up on him.

_Special doctor?_ He thought. _Weird questions? What does any of this mean? Why can’t I remember making this tape?_

Gregory felt determined to get to the bottom of this. He gulped as he pressed the “PLAY” button to continue the tape.

“He called it an ‘audio journal’. I like that name. He wants me to bring the recorder with me next time I go to see him so he can hear what I think about. It sounds weird, like a lot of the things he says, but I’ll do it because he asked me nicely. I’m sure he has a reason for asking me to do this,” young Gregory continued.

There was a minute of silence. Gregory thought that the tape was finished, but just as he was about to stop the tape, the voice of his supposed younger self spoke up.

“Um, I’m not exactly sure what it is, but there’s a weird movement in the corner of my eye,” he said. “I think it might have been moving since I started the tape, but I didn’t really notice it until I looked at myself in the mirror. It flared up when I looked at my reflection, and I looked away really fast because of that. I’m kinda scared of whatever this is. I’m gonna stop the tape now.”

The tape stopped there. Gregory felt even more confused than he had when he first found the recorder. His head was pounding, and he couldn’t make sense of much of what the voice of his younger self was saying. That last segment stuck out to him. He said on the tape that he could see himself in the mirror. That meant there was a time where the mirrors in his room weren’t covered. This couldn’t be possible, as the mirrors in Gregory’s room were always covered, but according to this tape that he had just listened to, they had apparently been uncovered at some point in the past. The thought of that alone made Gregory shudder. He was too invested in making sense of all of this to stop now. He quickly took the tape out of the recorder, placed it on the foot of his bed, and put another tape from the box into the recorder. He pushed the “PLAY” button and listened intently.

“Hi again,” young Gregory’s voice said. “I just got home from seeing my special doctor. He said he was glad I liked the idea of the journal, and he thanked me for bringing my recording with me. He listened to it, and a little bit after it was done, he asked me about that weird movement in my eyes. I couldn’t really explain it well, but he said he was glad that I tried.”

Another minute of silence. Gregory could hear his heartbeat getting louder with each passing second.

“Oh no,” young Gregory said. “I looked at the mirror again, and it came back. I looked away as quick as I could, but I can still see it. There’s something moving in the corner of my eyes. I’m really scared now. Mom and Dad went to the store with my baby sister for a bit, so I’m here alone.”

Gregory heard the voice on the tape begin to cry. Tears began to form in his own eyes. He couldn’t help but feel sorry for the young boy, even if the boy was supposedly himself. He was shocked that he couldn’t remember recording any of these messages. Then suddenly, there was a new noise on the tape. A strange rustling mixed with slight static, followed by a yelp.

“AH! MY HAND!” young Gregory shouted. “Hello?! Is someone there? Whatever that was, I saw that! My right hand has a cut on it and it really hurts! Please go away, whoever is there. Please.”

The rest of the tape was just the sound of the young Gregory crying. After the tape had stopped, Gregory could still hear crying, only now it was his own. He found that he was also rubbing the scar on his right hand. He struggled to remember how he originally got the scar in the first place.

_What happened to me?_ He thought. _Why can’t I remember any of this?_

He quickly grabbed the last tape that was in the box and swapped out the tape that was still inside the recorder. He felt he had to hear what was on it as quickly as possible. He slammed his thumb onto the “PLAY” button.

“Hello. It’s me again,” the voice of young Gregory said. The voice definitely belonged to young Gregory, but the sound was noticeably different from the previous tapes. He sounded like he had just been crying again, but he also sounded calm. “I saw my special doctor again today. He’s a lot nicer than I thought. He listened to my last journal tape, and he said he was going to help me get rid of that thing that was moving in my eyes. He gave me a bottle with special pills he said would help me. I asked about the mirrors, and he said I should probably not look at them for a while. Maybe I should ask Mom to cover them up to be safe. I’m going to keep making these tapes, but these first three are going in a separate place. I want to forget whatever that movement was. It was so scary. I’m stopping the tape now.”

The tape ended. Gregory felt a new urge. He went to his closet doors, but didn’t open them. Instead, he did something he never thought to do before. He took the cover off of the mirror. He felt as if he wasn’t even controlling his body anymore, and all he could do was watch as he slowly removed the cover that his mother had painstakingly placed on the mirror. When it finally came down, Gregory was horrified. He could barely see his own reflection, as his vision had become mostly clouded with fuzzy movements, but what he could see left him speechless. It was as if he was looking into a twisted version of a funhouse mirror. His arms and legs appeared skinnier and longer than they actually were, his fingers were pointed and white and looked more like sharp claws, and his mouth was contorted into an impossibly large smile that was filled with fangs in place of teeth. The reflection spoke.

“Well, well, well,” it growled in a voice that was like Gregory’s, but somehow distorted. “Long time no see, pal.” The reflection licked its lips. “You wanna play?”

The thing in the mirror reached its hand toward Gregory and swiped at his face, leaving him with a sharp pain on his right cheek. Gregory instinctively stepped back and touched the injured spot with his right hand. He brought his hand back into his view and saw fresh blood.

The figure retracted its claw like fingers back into the mirror, licked the tips that were now stained red with an extremely long pink tongue, and let out a twisted laugh. “Ha! Just like old times, right little Greggy?” The figure said in a mocking voice.

The figure then reared back and looked like it was about to leap onto Gregory, so he ran out of his room and headed to the kitchen as he heard the shattering of glass behind him. He suddenly felt as if he knew exactly what he needed to do. He reached for the cabinet where the families medicines were kept, opened it, and grabbed a bottle that was labeled with his name. He quickly twisted off the cap, took out two pills, and quickly swallowed them both. Then, he froze. There was no noise coming from the house. He felt like he was alone again. He slowly walked back to his room, and was shocked. It was just as he had left it, but there was nothing on his bed. The box, tape recorder, and tapes were all gone. The mirror on his closet door was uncovered, but fully intact. Gregory was confused, then he slowly turned toward the mirror. He saw himself. No strangely elongated limbs, no claw-like fingers, no evil smile, and no fangs. It was just him, as normal as ever. He rubbed the side of his face with his right hand and let out a sigh of relief. He had finally calmed down, and remembered that he had an appointment with his therapist later that evening.

“Of course,” Gregory thought out loud. “My special doctor.”

Then, as quickly as he had calmed down, he felt a shock of fear run through his body. As he looked in the mirror, he saw a newly formed scar on his right cheek.


End file.
